By Francis Moran
I was invited a couple of weeks ago to facilitate a group discussion on the marketing of university technology transfer offices at a forum organised by the Technology Transfer Partnerships. The forum was held in conjunction with the Ontario Centres of Excellence Discovery 2012 conference in Toronto. It was my first time at the OCE Discovery conference, and I was hugely impressed by the calibre of the presentations, the far-larger-than-expected scope of the exhibition and the superb opportunity for networking. It was a very busy two days.
The keynote speaker at the TTF forum, though, gave one of the more interesting and provocative sessions. Melba Kurman is a consultant, author and speaker who spends most of her time thinking about how universities can better commercialise their technology. I loved her presentation because it challenged and ultimately rejected the notion that Canadian universities are doing a much poorer job at commercialisation than their counterparts in the United States. As I have written before, I am utterly tired of the hackneyed tropes that Canadians don’t innovate as well as Americans, don’t take risks like Americans, and aren’t as successful as Americans. Kurman had me hooked at the very outset of her presentation when she suggested that an American lens is the wrong perspective through which to view what’s happening on Canadian campuses. Canada is doing its own thing, Kurman said, and doing it rather well.
“There are so many different approaches in Canada that I think are really interesting and valuable examples of different (technology transfer) models in action,” Kurman told me in a follow-on interview this week. American universities “would love to experiment with” some of these approaches but can’t because of a more hidebound model that puts undue emphasis on the number of patents a university technology transfer office produces and the revenue they derive from the licensing of their patent portfolios. “Canadian universities are free of this U.S. tendency,” Kurman said.
“Patents have never been equated to (innovation),” Kurman said. “They’re a rough guage. You can get a patent if you have the money (to pursue the application process). The real value of university research is making it easy to get to, letting it flow between the university and people out in the world who want to build stuff off of it.”
So, how well are Canadian universities doing? Well, since the traditional lens wasn’t working well for her, Kurman had to develop a few new ones, something she calls measuring applied university innovation. She looked at numbers of publications, numbers of disclosed inventions and the share of university research funding that came from industry, all good indicators of how well the lab work inside a university was getting out. Her numbers correct for the relative size of universities and by these yardsticks, Canadian universities perform very well indeed.
Take, for example, the number of disclosed inventions per dollar of research funding. Six Canadian universities rank among the top 20 in North America with three — the University of Guelph in first place, Queen’s University in third and the University of Manitoba in fourth — accounting for three of the top four.
Canadian universities dominate when ranked according to the number of publications per total dollars of funding, accounting for 13 of the top 20 and all but one of the top 10.
And finally, in one of the metrics I found most interesting, Canadian universities are more than holding their own when it comes to attracting industry research funding, with 12 Canadian schools among the top 20 in terms of industry funding as a share of total research dollars.
“These numbers suggest that Canadian universities … are not necessarily disconnected from industry in the way that seems to be a popular assumption,” Kurman said. “Industry funding is a strong vote and a strong predictor of a university that companies like to work with … like to tap into and partner with. It flies in the face of this simplistic notion that we have an innovation gap (in Canada).”
This success at attracting industry funding could, admittedly, be a double-edged sword. It could represent a shift from basic research, something Kurman and I both agree is a critical role of universities, to more applied or even contract research that sees industry turn to academia for little more than low-cost access to sophisticated lab and measurement tools. “I see that as a core question,” Kurman said, but she has not yet dug deeply enough into the data to answer it. “The deeper question is, ‘Is it the attraction of the basic research or is it the attraction that maybe Canadian universities are easier to work with?'”
Bottom line: Those who read here regularly will know that I am not terribly interested in comparing Canada to the U.S. on almost any yardstick. When it comes to innovation, I am far more interested in asking what do we really need to do as a nation in terms of research, innovation and commercialisation? What will work best for us? And how do we measure how well we are doing against that set of objectives?
What do you think is critical for Canadian innovators? What yardsticks would you use?
/// COMMENTS
7 Comments »Debra Chanda
June 03, 2012 3:43 pmBreakthrough Innovation
technical foundations of new companies and new industries that attain major competitive advantage –
Societal Benefit – Pacemakers, Stem Cell Lung Tranplants
Only true innovation comes in competitive marketplaces
Company Creation
Yoy top line revenues
Market share growth
Job creation
Neil McEvoy
June 03, 2012 3:48 pmHi Francis
As you can see from my site I am all for promoting and developing all things Canadian, and being a Scot this has no other motivations beyond a business objective, so I have no bias on any side of this argument.
So while I can understand you getting fed up with the bashing, at the end of the day I think you have to return to face reality if you mean to do good by the situation.
In terms of the KPIs I’d recommend, keep it simple and focus on the end goal. Ie the objective of commercialization is business and wealth creation, typically requiring a start-up to IPO or be acquired.
Before this can happen you need VC and for this to happen you need a patent. Hence why these measures persist, they reflect reality.
EVERYONE is compared to the USA in this area not just Canada, because they are by far the best at this process. If you’re not conceding them this leadership you can’t learn from what works and help Canadians better imho.
The article you quote comes across as ‘we don’t like our reality, so let’s invent some meaningless stats to make it look like we are doing good’. I don’t think that’s helpful outside of what the author is personally trying to achieve, sorry.
Neil.
ed bernacki
June 03, 2012 6:07 pmWhile I am Canadian I recently moved to Australia. Over the past 15 years of working in Canada, Singapore, USA, Australia and New Zealand, I developed an expertise in building capacity to innovate in our organizations. This is not about R&D and technology; it is about a wider issues of leadership, HR, and other systems needed to support new initiatives, whether this is new technology or a new service idea.
Two comments:
I found the general level of awareness and understanding of the basics of innovation in organizations very low in Canada. Do CEOs know how to innovate? I found the answer is often ‘no.’ Fewer still are those who want to invest in training and strategies to help them innovate.
2. I started a PhD in innovation. I became aware of an interesting paradox — the focus on innovation and commercialization in universities does not extend to the vast number of management academics. Why? The answers I was told were silly ie managers talk a different language to academics. This is pathetic. The very people who should study how commercialization should work (not just taking a technology and selling it — but branding, product development, international sales and distribution, and so on.
Where Canadian companies are very weak is the ability to create brands from Canadian brain power and sell it to the world. LuluLemon and RIM are exceptions. It is hard to find Canadian high value products overseas. Consumer products are rare. We are better at industrial products. I expand on this topic for an innovation column I write for a Kiwi magazine:
http://www.edbernacki.com/Monthly_Think_Piece.html
Here is a question for you – many of the general magazines in NZ and AU have innovation writers to prompt managers to be more innovative in some way. Can you name a single Canadian magazine that has one?
Francis Moran
June 04, 2012 8:48 amNeil: I think you misread Melba Kurman’s research.
She didn’t set out to “invent some meaningless stats to make it look like (Canadians) are doing good.” As an American, she would have little motive for doing so.
Rather, she — like many other analysts — sees flaws in using patent counts as the sole or leading measurement of how successful a university — or any organisation, for that matter — is at innovation. I didn’t repeat her entire presentation in my post so let me add here that she started by pointing to both institutional inertia and the influence of the Bayh-Dole Act as key reasons why there is such a heavy influence on patents in the U.S. While acknowledging that this approach has some merit and value, Kurman also maintained it has some shortcomings. And using it to compare the performance of universities in Canada, where the same influences are not at play, renders it inherently unhelpful.
On your point about the path to wealth being through a VC-funded startup that goes public or is acquired, I would argue there are other paths available to university-developed innovations, not the least of which is seeing them licensed into existing companies. If you apply your yardstick, Canadian universities may well be seen as doing a poorer job than their American counterparts but is this because they are less good at spinning out companies or because, as is certainly the case, there is relatively less venture capital available here in Canada?
Carl Weatherell
June 04, 2012 10:31 amI do agree with Ms. Kurman that comparing ourselves to the US is never a good thing. We as Canadians do this constantly and accept success once it is validated by our friends to the south. Real strategy and thus innovation rests in differentiation,thus we should be striving to determine what that is. For example, according to stats Canada, 97% of Canada’s economy is driven by SME’s yet we anguish over how to grow the next Fortune 500 company. Why?
Funding models for universities are very different in the US and Canada as are the reward systems. There is no point comparing apples to oranges unless you are into GMO’s. The vast majority of industry funding mentioned in the article is likely in-kind vs real hard cash. Funding agencies are primarily deadline driven which then drives a system of how do we spin a tale to acquire the money to fund our students (ie going after the cash) versus any real strategy and plan. This is starting to change, but if you ask any industry funders of university research many will tell you about the one paragraph emails received a day or week before a research grant deadline asking for $1M. A few years back the President and CEO of one of the major funding agencies in Canada remarked to me that as Dean in a large Cdn university there was no concept of strategy let alone plan.
Models of bridging the university-industry gap that I saw as extremely successful, did not come out of the TTO but rather out of a relationship between the professor and/or students and a company. The company funds the research, owns the IP, pays for patents, produces new products, hires students, funds more research and the cycle continues. Others I have seen are those professors, that actually have business acumen, start a company (or work with others to start a company while they retain the CTO role) and bring this experience back to the students. No license agreement, no IP disclosure but rather a mutual trust relationship. I am still firm believer that the majority of new commercializable ideas come from the students and mechanisms to encourage and support students to start new business should be a focus, and not mounds of cash but bootstrapping.
On the metrics front, the larger scale research funding used (and probably still uses) metrics such as # or patents (in one project I am aware of, government funding paid for 9 patents none of which resulted in anything commercial), # of publications, # of students trained, # of new industry partnerships etc. Do these accurately portray economic growth and success?
Yes the Cdn university system is “OK” but as with anything in life, there is room for significant improvement.
I believe we need to relax all of our assumptions and go back to very fundamental questions. For example, what about IP ownership. Canadian universities are funded almost entirely by public money so why does the public not have access to the IP?
Francis Moran
June 04, 2012 11:02 amNow that, Carl, is a thoughtful and much appreciated contribution to the debate. (Please, please go and add this to the discussion thread around this post on LinkedIn; it will greatly enhance the tenor and value of that discussion.)
On your point about the nature of industry funding of university R&D, there is no evidence to support your contention that the vast majority of it is likely in-kind, rather than cash. Nor is there any evidence to refute it, however.
It would be very useful not just to determine this but also to determine how meaningful is the engagement by industry. Is it a case of industry simply buying access to sophisticated lab equipment for short-term test and measurement requirements? Or is it a deeper engagement around rigorous investigation of a critical problem and then the application of the university-developed solution?
Carl Weatherell
June 04, 2012 9:07 pmHi Francis – there actually is lots of evidence as the funding agencies require the majority, or probably all, of grant applications at federal and provincial levels to document the type and nature of the “investment”. Whether it is easily available is another matter.
Your point about meaningful engagement is also critical as it is both and some in between. The really productive engagements are those of the type I indicate din the previous post.